Mancow — “It’s Torture”

Eric Muller, aka “Mancow”, is a fairly popular Conservative/Libertarian radio talk show host who until today didn’t consider water boarding to be torture.

This morning, Mancow — who apparently has a much larger nutsack than Sean Hannity and all of the other Conservative blatherers — submitted to a controlled water boarding demonstration.

He lasted all of six seconds.

Witnesses said Muller thrashed on the table, and even instantly threw the toy cow he was holding as his emergency tool to signify when he wanted the experiment to stop. He only lasted 6 or 7 seconds.

It is way worse than I thought it would be, and thats no joke,Mancow said, likening it to a time when he nearly drowned as a child. It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head backIt was instantaneousand I dont want to say this: absolutely torture.

I wanted to prove it wasnt torture, Mancow said. They cut off our heads, we put water on their faceI got voted to do this but I really thought Im going to laugh this off. ” [source: NBC Chicago]

A lot of the people who support this kind of practice are obviously the ones who have never actually been subjected to it. To them, it is only a minor case of someone “dribbling a few tablespoons of water down the subject’s nose and mouth”. Never mind that a person can actually drown in a tablespoon of water.

A lot of the supporters of water boarding will try to point out that some of our own special forces are put through a water boarding session — to train them how to resist. What nobody talks about is that these, like the Mancow demostration this morning, are all done under controlled situations, where “safe words” and signals are used, they aren’t tied down to the board and the person pouring the water gets to decide when to stop. Most importantly, they aren’t subjected to it for 183 times.

So here is my list of the next five people I’d like to see go through this demonstration:

Dick Cheney. After all, he insisted for a long time that this wasn’t torture described in the Geneva Convention.

Rush Limbaugh. Why? Just because.

Sean Hannity. I want to hear him continue to tell us how this isn’t torture after he is subjected to it.